Jewish leader welcomes 'Mein Kampf' pamphlets

British publisher announced plans to publish annotated excerpts from iconic Hitler book.

Mein Kampf sells in Poland_311.
(photo credit:Reuters)

President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dieter Graumann,
welcomed a British publisher's plans to print and sell excerpts from
Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in German newsstands, German Der Speigel reported Sunday.

The Jewish leader said he hoped the plans would "go some way to demystifying" Hitler's iconic book.

British publisher Peter Mcgee, no stranger to controversy in Germany,
said he plans to publish critical commentaries alongside excerpts from Mein Kampf, which will be available for purchase in Germany at the end of the month.

"It's about time the broader public is given the opportunity to deal with the original text," Mcgee told Der Spiegel.

In 2009, Mcgee faced charges from a Bavaria court over a publication of his that included annotated facsimiles fromNazi
newspapers, but was let off when the court decided his intentions were
not incitement to hatred, according to German English-language The Local
website.

In 2010, the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History announced that it planned to publish a complete annotated version of the book that Hitler dictated after he was imprisoned in 1923. That publication is slated for 2015.

Southern German state Bavaria hold the copyrights to Nazi texts, and the one for Mein Kampf expires in 2016.